As a writer, I challenge myself not to tell the same story - to tackle different characters with different issues.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
To combine telling an interesting story with brilliantly written characters is the most difficult thing to do.
Although my stories are all very different on the surface, I like to write stories about characters struggling with big problems. I'm always reminded, no matter how different from me one of my characters is from me on the surface, how we're all pretty much the same underneath.
In real life, people are constantly saying one thing and doing another, but if you write your characters that way, the story becomes too hard to follow.
All you can do is focus on telling the best story you can with compelling characters. If you do it right, it will endure. If you do it wrong, it won't.
I think that whenever a book is not a challenge, I'm telling the wrong story.
Mine is not a story to tell struggling writers.
What writer wants to make compromises with story? Story is the only reason you're in it.
Every story I write starts with a dilemma or a theme. Once I am convinced that this is the issue that is perturbing my thoughts, I start to look for characters capable of representing it.
Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.
I never write my stories as a wake-up call as such. I simply explore the kinds of situations that I find personally challenging by placing characters into situations that challenge them in similar ways.